Shadow Recieving Matte for Ground Plane

[soulburn3d]

Hmmm. Ok, I get what's happening now. Unfortunately, it won't do for what I'm trying to do. I'm basically trying to catch the shadow on a plane, and then still see anything below the plane (whether that be a light or another object), just with a shadow overtop. I'll have to do some rethinking of how I'm trying to achieve my goal. Anyways, thanks for all the help!

- Neil

[tryharder]

... but that´s exactly what it does.
put an object below the plane
the plane catches the shadow of the light
and
you see the object or a light below the plane
no need to rethink

if you want the dome light with a map it´s ok (invisible) and put a instance of the map in the background

Klaus

[DPS]

Not sure if this helps but if you:

1. Add a white material to your plane
2. Bake out your lighting for this plane
3. Re-add your environment image to your plane
4. Then divide this environment image by your baked light map for your plane shader

You can add objects and get the correct shadowing. I haven't tested this enough yet though to figure out whether the result is the same as using a material wrapper.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

... but that´s exactly what it does.
put an object below the plane
the plane catches the shadow of the light
and
you see the object or a light below the plane
no need to rethink

if you want the dome light with a map it´s ok (invisible) and put a instance of the map in the background

Klaus

That's not entirely true - when a camera ray hits matte object it omits every geometry behind it a reaches directly to the background. You can control object visibility in the alpha-channel via Alpha Contribution parameter inside WrapperMtl but not in the beauty-pass.
The only option would be to bake the matte-shadow-map and then use it into opacity slot of the ground material without matte-properties.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Here you could find a single-pass solution which will work with standard Max-lights but not with VrayDOmeLight.
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...392#post611392

[soulburn3d]

That's not entirely true - when a camera ray hits matte object it omits every geometry behind it a reaches directly to the background.

Yup, so objects below the plane (real objects or lights) don't appear.

- Neil

[soulburn3d]

Here you could find a single-pass solution which will work with standard Max-lights but not with VrayDOmeLight.
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...392#post611392

Thanks, but unfortunately I need something that works with vraylight in dome mode. Maybe I'll add something to the wishlist.

- Neil

[soulburn3d]

Not sure if this helps but if you:

1. Add a white material to your plane
2. Bake out your lighting for this plane
3. Re-add your environment image to your plane
4. Then divide this environment image by your baked light map for your plane shader

You can add objects and get the correct shadowing. I haven't tested this enough yet though to figure out whether the result is the same as using a material wrapper.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I need a one click solution for this particular application. I'm not trying to get a specific file working, I'm trying to come up with a generalized material that can be quickly assigned to anything and it just does the right thing. So I may be out of luck.

- Neil